Welcome to Q2 2024

Happy Sunday!

Writers mostly react. Something happens in the world, and we scramble to tell you what it is and why it matters.

But the best writers—the ones we admire—don’t go after the hottest story. Instead, they give themselves space. They let the buzz of the world die down and stop chasing trends. They think new thoughts. They ask new questions. And then they set out boldly to pursue them.

We believe that’s the only way to create original work—work that matters. 

That’s what we did this week—our first Think Week as a company. Instead of publishing new pieces, we gave ourselves the space to ask:

What are the most important questions in the world right now? What truly matters? Not just for today—but for the next 10 years? What makes us genuinely curious and excited?

Here’s what we came up with:

• How can AI enhance human potential?
• How does AI change companies and markets?
• What the hell is happening in frontier technology?
• Can you be good, rich, and happy?

We promise to pursue these questions for you this quarter. We’ll also keep reacting—to new AI models, tech IPOs, and whatever’s happening in memecoins. But we’ve set these questions as our North Star so we can focus on what’s important for you, and for ourselves.

We’ll cover them in Dan’s column Chain of Thought, Evan’s (now twice-weekly!) column Napkin Math, guest pieces from tech practitioners, our podcast, a reimagined Sunday Digest, and more. In the meantime, read on for some of our best pieces about AI from the past year and a half.—Dan Shipper

Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up to get it in your inbox.

---

Our stories

“What I Do When I Can’t Sleep” by Dan Shipper/Chain of Thought: It’s tempting to think about ChatGPT as just a productivity tool for writing faster emails, or something equally corporate and trite. Dan has discovered a deeper, more meaningful usage—self-discovery. Using LLMs allows you to analyze and scale your taste. Read this to learn how you can do the same. 

“The Knowledge Economy Is Over. Welcome to the Allocation Economy” by Dan Shipper/Chain of Thought: To get promoted in yesteryear, you had to get really good at applying and creating knowledge. Now that AI systems can do that for you, it shifts the focus of a career from accumulation to allocation—a totally different skill set. Read this to learn how this change will happen and what you can do to be prepared. 

“The One-person Billion-dollar Company” by Evan Armstrong/Napkin Math: The current obsession of the genteel class of tech Twitter is the idea that a one-person, one-billion dollar company will emerge with the help of AI. This would be nice (because we would like to be that person), but is it realistic? What kind of company could it be? Read this to find out if/how it could be possible to become a billionaire with no employees.  

“How I Use ChatGPT (As A Reasonable Person)” by Evan Armstrong/Napkin Math: AI may feel intimidating, but Evan is, to put it politely, not exactly technical. Despite that, he’s found ways to use ChatGPT to work 20 percent faster. The trick isn’t trying to automate your workflows—it’s in using AI to remove your blockers. Read this for a pragmatic, step-by-step guide on how to use ChatGPT to get more done. 

🔏 “The Ultimate Guide to Prompt Engineering” by Michael Taylor: The better you get at asking ChatGPT to do what you want, the more unfair of an advantage you'll have. Read this if you want to learn the five pillars of good prompting and how they apply to both text and image generation.

Are you ready to incorporate AI into your business? 

As a team of thinkers, entrepreneurs, and innovators, we frequently get asked to help organizations implement AI into their business. So we're working with select businesses to research, implement, train, and advise your team on the use of AI solutions within your workflows. How are we working with partners?

1. AI audit. You know you need to integrate AI across your business...but where to start? We'll advise across departments to see where, how, and why you can leverage AI. We'll work with department leaders and individual employees to uncover where AI can innovate or streamline (and where AI won't solve your problems).
2. Implementation. Okay, we found some opportunities for AI! Now, let’s implement them. Whether it's process changes to encourage leveraging ChatGPT, onboarding your team to new AI-powered software, or bringing in our technical team to build a custom AI model, feature, or solution, we can help.
3. Training. Based on our successful courses that have helped teams gain superpowers using AI, we'll run an end-to-end course on utilizing AI across your company, customized to your needs, to help 10x your team.
4. Advising. The AI landscape is constantly changing. We're working with VCs and PE firms to advise on where the market is headed, introduce them to the founders shaping the future, and help provide due diligence on their investment interests.

We’re currently working with mid-sized and large companies. If you’re interested, let us know, and a member of our team will reach out.

Eye candy

What if Apple had made the iPhone 20 years earlier—in 1987?

That’s all for this week! Be sure to follow Every on X at @every and on LinkedIn.